“….Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for or it is God who works in you to will and to act on behalf of His good pleasure.…” Phil 2:12b-13a
Do you ever feel like you’re on the outside of a certain Bible passage, looking in? Like you can’t unlock what the verses mean, no matter how much you chip away at the word meaning or greater context? I’ve felt that way for a LONG time, about MANY verses that seem too short and too cryptic. Recently John Piper explained what is beginning to happen to me. And it’s a welcome change. Let me share a recent example and maybe you’ll find some hope for how you, too, can be rewarded with nuggets of gold after some hard-core mining.
A piece of that reward arrived this past Sunday as I was poking around Blue Letter Bible to research the Greek meaning of ‘work out’ in the cited verse. In that rich soil, God brought forth a new ‘aha!’ moment as He opened up my understanding of Paul’s exhortation to the Philippians. I’ve always struggled to understand two aspects of his ‘strong suggestion’.
- what are we working out? are we actually working toward our salvation?
- what does working out one’s salvation have to do with what God is doing IN me?
What I have found is that some of the Bible seems to be written in a shorthand form. A lot of explicit explanation just isn’t there. Reminds me of poetry, which often stumps me. Or maybe some of these puzzling lines are like the parables Jesus told, meant to keep out those whose only interest in Truth is passing.
But I WANT to know, to understand, to OWN more and more of God’s Word. So I dig around and soak in the Bible A LOT. And after 18 1/2 years, things are beginning to ‘pop’.
What got me soaking all those years ago? I started actually STUDYING the Bible systematically through an in-depth Bible study called Bible Study Fellowship (BSF link here).
I had become a Christian 16 years earlier, but my scripture reading was hit or miss and except for about a year in a British Anglican church, we weren’t around ‘Christians’ who actually believed that the Bible was God’s authoritative Word, alive and full of power.
BSF changed all that.
So now, although we have moved and don’t find ourselves near a BSF class, we continue to read and study our Bible and belong to a church that submits to the authority of the Word.
And I’m beginning to reap my investment of time and energy. Verses and passages which previously remained closed to me are now opening up. And it’s exciting!
So what about the WORKING OUT conundrum? Here’s what I figured out or WORKED OUT from reading the Greek meanings of katergázomai/work out. When we take something and think it through and see how it applies, then it becomes OURS. We’re fashioning it to fit into what we already know. It’s like making room in your house for a new painting.
I was relieved to conclude that NO, we don’t do works to earn our salvation, but we have to renovate our entire understanding of who we are and why we exist in the first place by yielding to God as our Creator, Redeemer and Happy Master. And the comforting good news is that God does not leave us to do this home renovation on our own! Look at Philippians 13:a. It’s God Himself who is at work in us both to DESIRE (will) and WORK to please Him. What a sweet deal for us.
Knowing God so far, it’s safe to assume that He has many more treasures for me. If I stay rooted like a tree, near His living and life giving water, then as I draw up cool refreshing nourishment, I will continue to grow.
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